I don’t care if you have an iPhone, a Samsung or any smartphone. What your smartphone is doing is destroying your entire dating and social life. And here’s why:
Every time you look down at that little box, that little screen, you’re under the illusion that you have a life.
How many apps do you have on your phone? I’m sure one of the apps you have is Facebook.
And I’m sure you have Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OkCupid, Match or any one of the dating apps.
Those apps give you hope.
Those apps give you the illusion there’s just an endless supply of quality people to date.
So we become app-reliant.
We spend more time hunting down people on dating apps and Facebook than actually connecting with people in public.
I was talking to somebody today at the gym and she said to me, “Our phones are just ridiculous, they block us from everything.” She’s right.
If you’ve been on a date and the person is nice but not exactly 100% perfect, you go home and you pick up your little smartphone and you go to one of the illusions, one of your dating apps, and you start swiping some more. You think to yourself, well there’s got to be somebody out there because there’s always an endless supply or inventory of people that are showing up.
It’s amazing. People have become inventory now, people are no longer people; they’re inventory. They’re like groceries on a shelf.
They’re like pictures on Amazon.
That’s what the smartphone has done to us. It has made us feel that we’re shopping for a relationship.
It gives us the illusion that an amazing relationship is just a swipe away.
But it gets even worse. When we’re out and about, we’re not even talking to one another; we’re looking at our phones. What are we usually looking at? Instagram, social media, Facebook, whatever it might be.
Far too often, I see people swiping on Tinder instead of talking to people in the restaurant around them when they’re out on a Friday night.
When we’re out, instead of just sitting and allowing a moment to happen, we now sit at a bar or coffee shop or anywhere else and we stare at our phones. Instead of being alone in the moment or maybe having a moment with someone else, we hide behind what is safe: our phones.
I was talking to another woman the other day and she said to me, “Whenever I see a cute guy walking towards me, my first reaction now is to stare at my phone. That way I don’t have to have to talk to him.”
I’ve been saying it for years. Nobody seems to really listen, but everybody is feeling it. Our phones are killing us.
As I’m sitting and dictating this in traffic, the guy next to me in his pickup truck is staring down at his phone. The other woman across from me at the light is staring at her phone, getting in whatever she needs to get in, maybe answering a text or an email or whatever.
When I’m out and about and I see parents with their kids, I see parents staring at their screens while their kids play. The kids might as well just vanish because the parents aren’t there anyway.
It’s become an epidemic. It’s become a plague. If you think about it, people are lonelier than ever before.
You miss human interaction. You miss physical touch. When was the last time you cuddled or held something warmer than your phone? There are people who sleep with their phones under their pillow. I dated somebody like that.
We’re out of control, people. Our phones are not making our love lives any easier. They’re basically destroying them. We’re not really connecting with people anymore. We’re not talking to people anymore. We’re staring at a little screen. Every chance we get, we become screen addicts.
Whenever you don’t text somebody back right away, they get angry and wonder why you’re not texting them back. Our phones are destroying our love lives.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not 100% anti-technology. It’s great that I get to connect with people all over the world. It’s great that I can do business wherever I go. But the fact of the matter is we need to be more present wherever we are. We have the opportunity to find love, find connection and find that relationship that we so deserve, desire and crave.
Put your phone down. Your love life depends on it.
